Story Structure Workshops

Brenda Chin, former alumnus of Barrie North Collegiate, is offering a
series of 10 practical workshops based on celebrated screenwriter Blake
Snyder’s book, SAVE THE CAT.

An award-winning editor, Brenda has worked in the romance industry for more
than 25 years. Through her many years with Harlequin, she had the
opportunity to work with some of the best writers in the business, often
buying their first book.

This workshop is useful for writers working on fiction novels of any genre,
exploring the importance of story structure and character development.
Brenda provides insightful, encouraging critiques with grace and humour.

We extend an invitation to join her Tuesday nights from Sept 29 to Dec 8
between 7pm and 8pm at the new Innisfil Public Library at 967 Innisfil
Beach Road. The cost is $50 for attendance for all ten sessions. Please
register by calling the library at 705 431 7410. (The fee is to be given in
cash to Brenda Chin directly.)

Evie Klein Whittingham, President
Barrie Writer’s Club

Writers’ Community of Simcoe County March Meeting

Usher in Spring with Wayson Choy

Wayson Choy

Wayson Choy speaks to the WCSC on his process and his life in a compelling and candid talk on Sunday, March 22. Following his talk, Wayson will lead a one-hour workshop. This event takes place from 11:30 to 1:00 p.m. at Down by the Bay, 121 Mississaga St. E., Orillia.

Writing Interactive Stories

Interested in writing and creating interactive fiction games? Local start-up One More Story Games allows writers to do just that. You can take part in a webinar to learn more. Here’s some info:

Hi all – Are you a writer, screenwriter or game designer? Check out One More Story Games – we’ve developed a platform for you to create or convert your stories into playable story games, like a book/video game hybrid. Published authors receive royalties on their work. We’ve got an upcoming webinar on Sunday – check it out! Better yet, share this with your wordy friends! Thanks! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1572017149704983/

Here’s their website: http://www.onemorestorygames.com/

Here’s the link to the webinar: OMSG Webinar on Google Plus

Canadian Authors’ Association – Thursday September 25, 2014

This month’s CAA meeting features Giller nominated author Anthony De Sa. The event takes place from 6:30 to 8:30 pm in Orillia @ 121 Missisauga Street East.

More info from the CAA:

Come out to our monthly meeting this Thursday September 25! 6:30 pm Brewery Bay down by the bay room! We are adding a new feature! Writers helping writers! This month’s theme: Inspiration!

Writing Prompts: July 24th – August 3rd, 2014.

#77380664 / gettyimages.com

Writing Prompts

 

1. While visiting Cuba, a strange event occurs…
2. Bread, milk, eggs and a hammer…
3. Pick a marketing slogan and use the individual words from the slogan in a poem.
4. Every time the nurse at the doctors office sticks you with a needle, you get a huge red spot on the injection site but this time an infection results.
5. Write about three things that really make you happy.
6. Write about three things that really make you sad.
7. A long time ago, in the days before mobile phones, we used to use…
8. In the future, we won’t use mobile phones to communicate, we’ll use…
9. A tidal wave hits the beach.
10. A photographer travels to New Mexico to photograph wild horses but ends up capturing something much more…
11. Write a letter of protest to the government about something completely absurd.
12. Write a poem or story using the following words: generations, trouble, tender, and vibrant.
13. You wake up to find yourself in a deserted Supermarket parking lot, crumpled up in a shopping cart at 4am. You have a bottle in your hand with no recollection of your life or who you even are…
14. While on a vacation in Banff, Alberta you go on a hike with a group of fellow travellers. While on the hike, the tour guide slips and falls into a ravine and dies. The rest of the group must…
15. While writing in a dark forest, cowering behind a tall pine tree…

 
~Sara @LunaElektraSMC
 
Prompts from: Apple Apps Store, Writing Prompts by 21 x 20 Media, Inc. Download with iTunes here. With grammar and typos of prompts corrected, copy-edited and tweaked for relevance.

Writing Prompts: Week of April 13th to April 19th, 2014.

Writing Prompts:

 

1. Your new hot tub looks like a spaceship with all the buttons, lights and other gadgets – oh and it can fly…
2. A diver’s underwater camera records an unusual event with strange creatures…
3. Fifteen years after a toxic spill in a small town, strange things are now happening…
4. Write down thirty words that describe your life. But use them to create a poem about something other than your life.
5. While visiting a senile relative in a nursing home, you discover that it’s haunted by the residents who have previously died there…
6. Pulling the file from the cabinet, images rushed through his/her head. He/she opened the file and re-read the report. It was something he/she had hoped to forget…
7. He/she screamed, “don’t touch that soap!” but the warning came too late.
8. After your workout at the gym you open your locker to find a note with the world, “HELP!” scribbled on it.
9. Write about the letter X or your favourite letter.
10. Consider a volcano and the changes it goes through over its lifetime. Write a poem about its experiences.
11. You are a guest at a wedding when two family members start an argument during the ceremony.
12. Find a word/term at the Urban Dictionary or invent one. Write about it, what it means, and/or how you came up with it.
13. Imagine a radio station on another planet. Write about it… Include things like its name, call letters, DJ staff, play lists, etc.
14. Think of a movie quote and then write new dialogue around it. Here is a list of the top fifty funniest movie quotes to get you started:  50 Funniest Movie Quotes  Note: 18+ Some of the quotes may be offensive to younger audiences – Please use discretion. BWC is only for 18+ adults.
15. Think about the last time you traveled to a different province, state or country and write about some part of the trip.

 
Prompts from: Apple Apps Store, Writing Prompts by 21 x 20 Media, Inc. Download with iTunes here. With grammar and typos of prompts corrected, copyedited and tweaked for relevance.

~Sara  🙂

 

Sara’s Writing Prompts

Friggatriskaidekaphobia!

No, I didn’t just swear at you! 😉 But this week has a notoriously bad day in it…A day with ominous bias attached to it, Friday the 13th!  Wait! Don’t run away in horror yet!  I have writing prompts for you to scribble away this superstition into oblivion – well at least until the next Friday the 13th December 2013.

That will leave you free to worry about whether or not The Mayan Long Calendar was miscalculated by scholars and the actual impending date of doom for the Mayan Apocalypse will occur on December 21st 2013 (instead of the previously proposed December 21st 2012).  AAAAH! Kidding! 😛

But just to be sure, make sure you have plenty of Mole sauce and Cocoa beans on hand for sacrificial offerings to Quetzalcoatl. Have fun and Write on!  🙂

Prompts:

Week of September 7th – 14th 2013.

1. You go to a hairstylist to get a new ‘do, and you tell them that you trust them. Well, your trust bought you a fluorescent green Mohawk!
2. Write about your first memories of a bad or even lucky day on Friday the 13th.
3. I thought it was a skateboard!
4. I had nothing to lose, so I…
5. Why did the postman cross the road?
6. Write a story or poem about a broken promise.
7. It was like nothing had ever happened. Tom didn’t remember a thing and I was off the hook, or so I thought.
8. Write a story that includes the following: “Our faithful vehicle chose that moment to run out of gas.”
9. “Attitude is everything”, she told me.
10. I watched them go on and on for hours. Just when I thought, they were going to stop, on they went again, until finally…
11. A mouse and a mole were sitting in a hole when along comes a troll…
12. When Arthur lifts the cover off the trash can…
13. While digging a new flowerbed, your neighbor finds a bone that looks suspiciously like a human femur.
14. You’ve taken your first trip to an intergalactic dance club from your colony on Mars, tell us about your boogie/clubbing adventure!
15. In a lab somewhere, chemists formulate the perfect formula to finally…
16. The smell of roasting meat wafted out of the restaurant as he dug through the dumpster in the back.
17. “So you don’t remember the man in a black trench coat, even though the video recorded you ringing him up?” Father Damien Karras SJ wasn’t buying it. Duh-duh-DUUUH! *insert creepy Friday the 13th Film Noir/Horror plot mash-up here* 😉
18. Combine two animals to form a new species. Write about an adventure had by a baby animal of that new species…
19. While writing in a dark forest, cowering behind a tall oak tree…
20. Sorry, but swimmers are not allowed to…
21. You receive a package in the mail. There is no return address. Inside is a large pair of clown shoes filled with jelly beans.
22. An old man finds a coin that reminds him of a special day from his youth.
23. Write a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper or a local MP about an issue that’s important to you. (it can be satire if you wish)
24. I was reading a writing prompt on https://barriewritersclub.wordpress.com/ when suddenly… 😉

All lovely writing prompts were gathered from Writing.com‘s prompt machine!  With a few tweaks here and there from me.  Enjoy!

~Sara

Sara’s Writing Prompts

Hello!  So have you been busy writing this past week or have you been too busy getting the kids ready for the first day back to school?  Do you need some inspiration or a prompt to get  your creativity flowing?  Yes?  Good!  I have a whole list of writing prompts just for you.  Take a few minutes, consider where these prompts will lead you then write on!

 

Prompts:

Week of August 26th to September 1st, 2013.

1. Little did John know the panther was just yards away, watching his every move.
2. A straight line and a curved line argue which one is more useful.
3. An unknown person from Egypt sends you a box containing a rock etched with hieroglyphics.
4. One day, your dog starts talking to you.
5. Right before she dies, your mother tells you you’re adopted.
6. He raised his goblet: “Cheers! Here’s to Love!” Then she quipped back, “Define Love.”
7. Write about the smallest insect you’ve ever seen.
8. A frozen pond in the middle of the desert catches the attention of scientists from around the world.
9. You’re in a log cabin deep in the woods. No utilities. Lake plentiful with fish and a prehistoric animal…
10. You just discovered the reason your adopted son is so disruptive of every aspect of family life: Attachment Disorder. What now?
11. “Your name will be in lights, kiddo!” said D. W. Griffith to Mary Pickford.
12. A day after you submit your thesis, you get a call from the Director of the CIA or CSIS/CSEC.
13. Write about the life of a box of Lime Jello.
14. Now you know the reason your neighbor has been sitting in his yard, looking at his shed and brooding.
15. If you could get a job in any occupation, what would you do for a living?
16. Add a dab of this, a dribble of that and stir. Within seconds, you’ll have…
17. The commercials said the shampoo would make my hair grow strong. I didn’t expect…
18. I don’t usually read the end of a book first, but this time I just had to know!
19. A for-hire corporate spy has stolen a flash-drive with sensitive information on it. He must transfer it to his employer within the next week because…
20. A ring is found with an intriguing inscription inside.
21. Pick a marketing slogan and use it in a poem or short-story.
22. You are being driven around by the worst driver ever.
23. The calendar says March 10th, but the last day you remember is March 1st.
24. A stop at the pub on the way home changed his destiny.
25. A circle, a square and a triangle…
26. When her cell phone rings, they think nothing of it. But when his rings too…
27. “Couldn’t you hear me knocking?” she asked. “Uh, no… I was… “
28. The cup tipped over, spilling its contents onto her mobile phone, which was the only remaining connection to the outside world.
29. If life is a TV channel, I’m currently on…

Prompts gathered from Writing.com.

Sara’s Writing Prompts: Visual Story Prompts

Did you all have a good Canada Day long weekend? Did you eat mouth-watering barbeque, play with fireworks you shouldn’t have, and wave the great Red & White Canadian Maple Leaf flag? No? Me either…Not to worry! I had an idea for a new way to visually set you into the writing mode, by providing something I will call, Visual Story Prompts.

So it works like this:

I’ll give three pictures, and you will create the story that weaves the mesh between these three different picture items.

I took a page out of Oliver Sacks book entitled, An Anthropologist on Mars. The nonfiction work documents a meeting he had with Temple Grandin who has Autism. But the interesting part about her is, the unique way in which she perceives and processes our shared world. This is the case for many individuals who face issues of Neurodiversity – Ms. Grandin rarely if ever thinks in words, but in pictures. For most of us, communication in words is intrinsic to being human. Imagine what her world consists of devoid of words, words that ultimately facilitate essential human interconnectedness and the abstraction that language provides the majority of us with. This alternative way of understanding the world has allowed her to have a very unique way of perceiving what is.

Here are the pictures, and you the writer will use your words to create the story.

Story Choices:

1. A black Labrador Retriever, a sleeping baby and an aqua blue rotary dial telephone.

2. A going away party, a well-traveled suitcase and a bell on a hotel desk check-in.

3. A rustic camping trip, a bunny and a roll of duct tape.

4. A pink wig, a bottle of white wine and a tin trash can.

5. Wooden clogs-shoes, a Tuna Salad sandwich and a grey Tabby cat.

6. A businessman, a stopwatch and a luggage arrival carousel with people ridding on it.

7. An old purple door, a stack of old books, and a man reading by a lake.

8. A map of Canada highlighting the province of Manitoba (my bad, I originally put Alberta! HA!), an Army jeep and a soldiers footlocker.

9. An old Canadian $1 bill, Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and a plate of Poutine.

10. A red Toronto Sun newspaper box, The City of Toronto, and a Twix chocolate candy bar.

Good luck and write on!

~Sara

Monday June 3, 2013 Meeting @ the Library

 

Tonight’s meeting will take place at the downtown Barrie Library. See everyone at 6:30 p.m. until 9 p.m. We will start the meeting off with a writing prompt in the hope that it results in more submissions for the BWC anthology project.